JULY
2009
Bag
in Box filling
Now that I'm back from my bag in box filling, having drunk a little more
zider, absorbed the wonderful alcoholic aroma as I leant over the packing
table for an hour or so, I'm feeling relaxed enough to start a sensible thread.
Mark can also relax now,
because I've gratefully filed Dennis' Wurzel words away
until Wassail!
While I was doing the filling job I got wondering how others go about this
task. For several years I've used a home made volumetric filler that mimics
the ultra expensive commercial filling machines. At present this is in pieces
awaiting some
modifications that I have planned, but not yet found the
time to carry out, so I
am using what I regard as 'Barry's method'. Actually
I expect a lot of people
do this, because it is simply filling the bag by means of a large jug. I have a 5
litre plastic measuring jug, which is about the largest measure that it is
reasonable to lift with one hand. The other hand is needed to support a
plastic funnel in the neck of the bag being filled. I have always laid the bag
flat and outside of the
box, so that it resembles a cushion on the table top,
when filled with cider.
Once filled, I carefully stroke the bag as if it
was a pussy cat. This is
to massage the air bubbles towards the neck so that they can release to the atmosphere.
I am also carefully holding the neck with one hand whilst stroking with the
other, so that the cider
does not flop out of the neck before the tap can be been
snapped in to seal it.
By carefully allowing the cider to rise right up into the neck as the tap is being fitted,
I minimize the quantity of air left in the bag. There is always going
to be a little left, however
carefully this is done, because of course the tap itself
contains a small volume of trapped air. There is always an air bubble that appears after the tap has been pushed
home and I view this as a measure of my success. I've found that it should be
possible to achieve a residual
air bubble about the size of half a crown, or lets say a
£2 coin, for non Wurzel
friendly folk. This small amount of air has never been enough to affect the keeping
quality of my cider. I know this, because I've checked the flavour of the
dregs from some empty bags
that have been returned to me, because I wanted reuse the
boxes. This tiny amount
of cider left in the bag, though past its prime. is still perfectly
drinkable.
Some weeks ago Barry was here
and we were talking
about bag in box filling. Barry fills with a jug and
we agreed how tedious
this can become. He told me that he had heard of another method that could work well.
Instead of filling the bag outside of the box volumetrically, a much simpler
method would be to fit the
bag in the box and fill the bag by weight, with the whole
thing sitting on a weighing machine. One would
just have to tare the bag and box before filling and then fill until the
scales reached 20 kg. Hey
presto! What a good idea, I thought. I just had to give
this a try! The bathroom
scales would give me a feel for the idea, though a
trade approved instrument would be needed if the method proved to be successful. Unfortunately I found that
using this method it was not possible to stroke the air out well enough,
after filling the bag. To see what I had been able to achieve, I pulled the
filled bag out of the box, once the tap had been fitted.
The residual air bubble was the size of a tea plate! I felt that this would defeat
the main benefit of B in
B packaging and I would definitely not be comfortable
sending out a box filled
in that way. It is possible to exclude all of the
air by filling the bag
right up, but the bag will then hold 22 litres. Not only is this too much extra cider
to give away, but the bag is then too big to fit in the box! The other problem
I noted was that there was
too much bounce during the fill which could give erroneous
readings. A well damped
scale would be essential, which in turn would tend
to slow down the filling cycle.
So it was back to the jug for me, for the time being. Back
ground music
relieved the tedium and I found that I got quite good at filling this way after a
bit of practice. The one
big advantage over my normal method was that the jug and
funnel are so quick and
easy to wash at the end of work. Cleaning my filling
machine measuring tank
and its associated pump and hoses is a much greater chore, especially when tired
after a big session of packaging.
Rose
Continued…
Ideally only fully dry or artificially sweetened cider should
be packaged in bag in box ( Pasteurised is ultra safe, but lets leave that for
Westons etc). It is all too easy to bag a cider too early, thinking that it
will be alright. I made this mistake early in March to meet demands from
customers who were asking when the cider would be ready. The cider tasted fine
and was within 2 or 3 points of being fully dry, so I decided to take the risk.
I optimistically did a few more boxes than needed and these sat on the stairs
in the ciderhouse for several weeks unsold. After a few weeks the boxes began
to look rotund and I feared that they could even burst. I became worried about
those that had gone to pubs. Fortunately It was not a problem because by then a
lot of their content had been drawn off and sold, thus reducing the pressure on
the inside of their cardboard containers.
I opened up one of the boxes that had remained in the
ciderhouse, to see the problem at first hand. It was surprising to find that
there was no gas in the cider containing bag at all. The co2 had made a cushion
all around it, within the walls of the outer layers of the bag. I knew that the
Smurfit bags were multi layered. I think there are 3 layers, but I've never
seen any descriptive literature on the product. It was then that I remembered
Simon Vine from Jigsaw Bag in Box, telling me that the bags were microporous
having been developed for the packaging of real ales. I did not understand this
at the time, but now I realised that it is just the inner bag that is
microporous, to allow any gas to escape to the outer layer. The clever thing is
that this affords further protection for the contents. As the box has greater
volume than the bag a certain amount of gassing can be tolerated until the box
begins to distort.
I deliberately left one of these early boxes for several
months to see if the inner bag would burst. It did not, in spite of the tight
sausage like appearance of the box! The bags are very strong and thoroughly
reliable. I have never had one that leaked under any circumstances.
I have also tried pricking the outer bag to release the co2
and it does work to reduce the size, but I think it may jeopardise the
protection of the cider in the inner bag. Not only has the cushion effect been
lost but as the inner bag is microporous, it probably means that oxygen is now
able to pass into the cider. In all probability the cider will be drunk before
this becomes a problem, but storage quality is likely to be affected in the
long term.
I reckon that at least 4 months storage should normally be
achieved without noticeable deterioration of quality.
Ray wrote:
Hey,
thanks for clearing that up, Rose! Isn't it great to quickly find the answer to
something that's been bothering you?
We
had a very panicky phone call from a local publican who was holding their first
Beer & Cider festival, informing us that some of the cider boxes were
"...about to burst..." (not ours :) ) so Gail rushed over to find
exactly what you describe - the outer bag swelled to bursting, but the inner
bag looking fine.
Thanks
for the info!
Cheers,
Ray
Holiday
Time & Orchard Grass
At
the end of last month Frances and I had a memorable holiday in Norfolk, where
we stayed in one of the rooms that have been converted for B & B in the
tower of Cley Windmill. Being of Fenland origin myself, windmills have long
had a nostalgic attraction for me. From time to time I've climbed up and down
inside some of those that are now open to the public as museums, but living in
one, even just for a few days, was very much a special thing for me to do. I
loved it!
There was also something special
concerning cider that I'd had in mind. During our holiday in the same area last
year I had become acquainted with the excellent Whin Hill cider and I was dying to
see where it was made. It was very easy to find Jim and Pete's cider works and
shop. Their nice little yard with traditional barns and newly built cider shop
is right alongside the main car park in the middle of Wells-next-the-Sea. How very
convenient for the grockles! On returning from the beach it is so easy for them
to load up their cars with plenty of bottles of good cider before returning to
their campsites or B & Bs, thence to enjoy a Norfolk craft cider evening! I
was soon aware of a major obstacle to this idea. The gates of the yard were
closed and bore a sign saying that the shop was only open on Saturday and
Sunday. Oh dear! We grockles would be back home by then. My seldom used mobile
phone now came into its own and I was able to speak to Jim who was busy
somewhere or other behind the tall wooden doors that fronted the yard. "We
are bottling today, but come to lunch on Wednesday, Rose". He seemed to
know of me, though we had never met. How I love this fraternity of craft
cidermakers. Nicest people on earth!
Jim and Pete certainly lived up to
my expectations. They made us most welcome. Then we enjoyed a convivial chat
during the tasty lunch, accompanied by the pleasure of tasting of each other's
ciders! I particularly enjoyed their Dabinett SV, as did Frances their
Discovery Apple juice. I was impressed by the high quality of the products in
the attractive little shop, their professionalism and self discipline. I learnt
that Thursday was to be another bottling day and that Friday would be devoted
to orchard work. How I wished I could plan my work so well and then stick
to it like they do. A quick look into the barns showed an impressive array of
tall stainless Speidel, 3000 litre tanks, 3 bottle pasteurising tanks and
bottling and labelling machinery. All of their 30,000 litres is bottled in the
green 75 cl BCS bottles that we know so well. What a lot of work it must be, as
it's a mostly manual operation. I'm still playing games with my bottling as I
get fed up with it too soon and move on to some other job that needs doing.
This was an object lesson in disciplined work before my very eyes!
Unusually, the cider production is in two separate stages at Whin Hill.
The harvesting, milling and pressing is all done at the orchard 10 miles away.
The juice is then transported back to Wells for fermentation, storage and final
bottling. This is clever, because it saves on transportation and problems of
pomace disposal. Their spent pomace is merely scattered in the orchard where it
returns its remaining goodness to the ground. We were pleased to be invited to
see the orchard, during their scheduled visit there on the Friday.
As we were due to go home on the
Friday, it was fortunate that the position of the orchard fitted in well with
the route we would be taking. When we arrived we found Jim and Pete on their
knees. There were spanners everywhere on the ground and they were puzzling over
part of their tractor mounted mower. The little extension mower to one side of
the main machine that is used to cleverly curl around the trunk of each tree
had been giving trouble. By the time we arrived they had decided to call in an
engineer, so they then had a bit of time available to show us around. This was
one of the most beautifully kept orchards I have ever seen, a real delight! Row
upon row of neat half standards already showing a fine set of fruit. The well
kept grass, was short and neat right up to the trees. There were no
whiskery bits around the trunks, yet no ghastly herbicide strips here, just as
an orchard should be. We even saw a couple of hares sitting upright, as we
wandered round, hardly bothered by our presence at all. The planting was almost
entirely of West Country varieties with lots of Dabinett, Kingston Black, Major
and Brown's. No wonder I enjoy their cider! Back at the barn we saw their belt
press and pomace elevator, the generator that runs it all and various pieces of
agricultural machinery. They demonstrated their incredible Tuthill apple
picker-upper. I had not seen the likes of this before. It is similar to the
usual 'round and round the tree' hand guided type, but is fitted with two long
hydraulically powered arms that are connected
to the box that receives the harvested apples. When the box is full, the rams
are then activated. The long arms rapidly rotate upwards, quickly lifting the
box which then flings the apples out, so that they can be shot into a trailer
positioned close to the machine. Imagine a medieval siege catapult and you have
pictured it! I would like to have one of these. What a lot of back ache it
would save!
There
is a problem with belt presses that had not occurred to me before. It is
impossible to macerate the pomace, because as soon as the pomace is milled it
has to go to the belts. Jim must have been thinking about doing some keeving or
perhaps tannin reduction. He had read of my experiences with the use of a mono
pump and wondered if one could be used to take pomace out from the press to
fill external containers for maceration. We could only briefly consider this
because the engineer then arrived to see what could be done about the mower,
which seemed a suitable time for us to say good bye and continue with the long
journey that lay ahead.
I've thought quite a bit about all
the machinery I had seen, since we've been back, particularly that mower. I had
not been aware that someone had already invented a machine to deal with my
annual problem in the orchard; the mowing of the grass close to the trunks.
Although my trees are standards, during the summer as the weight of the crop
increases, the branches hang lower and lower and I can't get the tractor
underneath the trees without causing damage. This means that I can't get the
topper close enough to the trees to do a good job.
Things looked an even bigger mess
than usual this year, because I had let the grass get too long in the
springtime. I felt quite depressed about it. Maybe I need to look for a second
hand ride on mower or even take the roll bar off the tractor. To go round
afterwards with a brush cutter is just too big a job for me. How nice it would
be to have that little mower extension that glides around the trunks, making
everything neat and delightful!
To solve the problem, I could only
resort to what I've done before at this time of the year. Promise not to laugh!
I walk around each tree keeping my back to the trunk. This tramples the long
grass to the ground. As I go around the tree I pull in the grass cuttings left
by the topper on the surrounding grass, by means of a grass rake. This makes a
mulch mat around each tree that stifles the grass that is growing close to the
trunk. The grass mulch eventually rots down, adding nutrients to the soil. I
got the idea from my gardening, on finding that the growing of hydrangeas is
much improved by a regular mulch of lawn clippings. It is also a good aid to
water retention during a drought, though there is not much sign of that
happening this summer! Although it still looks a bit of a mess to begin with,
by the time there have been a few heavy showers, the collars of hay around the
trees are beaten down and have turned a uniform brown. The orchard then starts
to look quite presentable again.
There is a really good crop on most
trees this year and the leaves look very healthy. I'm ready to believe that the
bizarre technique with the hay, plus the horse manure I added in winter has
done quite a bit of good. If only it looked as neat as Whin Hill orchard!
Rose